Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed Puritans
would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins,
that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family
tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its
topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim, that I have ever
cherished, would they recognize as laudable; no success of mine—if my
life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by
success—would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively
disgraceful. “What is he?” murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathers
to the other. “A writer of story-books! What kind of a business in
life—what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in
his day and generation—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might
as well have been a fiddler!” Such are the compliments bandied between
my great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! And yet, let
them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have
intertwined themselves with mine.

Planted deep, in the town’s earliest infancy and childhood, by these
two earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since subsisted here;
always, too, in respectability; never, so far as I have known,
disgraced by a single unworthy member; but seldom or never, on the
other hand, after the first two generations, performing any memorable
deed, or so much as putting forward a claim to public notice.
Gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight; as old houses, here and
there about the streets, get covered half-way to the eaves by the
accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred
years, they followed the sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each
generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a
boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting
the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and
grandsire. The boy, also, in due time, passed from the forecastle to
the cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his
world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with the
natal earth. This long connection of a family with one spot, as its
place of birth and burial, creates a kindred between the human being
and the locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery or
moral circumstances that surround him. It is not love, but instinct.
The new inhabitant—who came himself from a foreign land, or whose
father or grandfather came—has little claim to be called a Salemite;
he has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity with which an old
settler, over whom his third century is creeping, clings to the spot
where his successive generations have been imbedded. It is no matter
that the place is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old wooden
houses, the mud and dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the
chill east wind, and the chillest of social atmospheres;—all these,
and whatever faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to the
purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the natal
spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case. I felt it
almost as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that the mould of
features and cast of character which had all along been familiar
here,—ever, as one representative of the race lay down in his grave,
another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the main
street,—might still in my little day be seen and recognized in the
old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is an evidence that the
connection, which has become an unhealthy one, should at last be
severed. Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it
be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the
same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so
far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their
roots into unaccustomed earth.

On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange, indolent,
unjoyous attachment for my native town, that brought me to fill a
place in Uncle Sam’s brick edifice, when I might as well, or better,
have gone somewhere else. My doom was on me. It was not the first
time, nor the second, that I had gone away,—as it seemed,
permanently,—but yet returned, like the bad half-penny; or as if
Salem were for me the inevitable centre of the universe. So, one fine
morning, I ascended the flight of granite steps, with the President’s
commission in my pocket, and was introduced to the corps of gentlemen
who were to aid me in my weighty responsibility, as chief executive
officer of the Custom-House.

I doubt greatly—or, rather, I do not doubt at all—whether any public
functionary of the United States, either in the civil or military
line, has ever had such a patriarchal body of veterans under his
orders as myself. The whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant was at once
settled, when I looked at them. For upwards of twenty years before
this epoch, the independent position of the Collector had kept the
Salem Custom-House out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude,
which makes the tenure of office generally so fragile. A soldier,—New
England’s most distinguished soldier,—he stood firmly on the pedestal
of his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality of
the successive administrations through which he had held office, he
had been the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of danger and
heart-quake. General Miller was radically conservative; a man over
whose kindly nature habit had no slight influence; attaching himself
strongly to familiar faces, and with difficulty moved to change, even
when change might have brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on
taking charge of my department, I found few but aged men. They were
ancient sea-captains, for the most part, who, after being tost on
every sea, and standing up sturdily against life’s tempestuous blasts,
had finally drifted into this quiet nook; where, with little to
disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presidential
election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence. Though
by no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and infirmity,
they had evidently some talisman or other that kept death at bay. Two
or three of their number, as I was assured, being gouty and rheumatic,
or perhaps bedridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at the
Custom-House, during a large part of the year; but, after a torpid
winter, would creep out into the warm sunshine of May or June, go
lazily about what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure and
convenience, betake themselves to bed again. I must plead guilty to
the charge of abbreviating the official breath of more than one of
these venerable servants of the republic. They were allowed, on my
representation, to rest from their arduous labors, and soon
afterwards—as if their sole principle of life had been zeal for their
country’s service, as I verily believe it was—withdrew to a better
world. It is a pious consolation to me, that, through my interference,
a sufficient space was allowed them for repentance of the evil and
corrupt practices into which, as a matter of course, every
Custom-House officer must be supposed to fall. Neither the front nor
the back entrance of the Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise.

The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for their
venerable brotherhood that the new Surveyor was not a politician, and
though a faithful Democrat in principle, neither received nor held his
office with any reference to political services. Had it been
otherwise,—had an active politician been put into this influential
post, to assume the easy task of making head against a Whig Collector,
whose infirmities withheld him from the personal administration of his
office,—hardly a man of the old corps would have drawn the breath of
official life, within a month after the exterminating angel had come
up the Custom-House steps. According to the received code in such
matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a politician, to
bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guillotine.
It was plain enough to discern, that the old fellows dreaded some such
discourtesy at my hands. It pained, and at the same time amused me, to
behold the terrors that attended my advent; to see a furrowed cheek,
weather-beaten by half a century of storm, turn ashy pale at the
glance of so harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or
another addressed me, the tremor of a voice, which, in long-past days,
had been wont to bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough to
frighten Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these excellent old
persons, that, by all established rule,—and, as regarded some of
them, weighed by their own lack of efficiency for business,—they
ought to have given place to younger men, more orthodox in politics,
and altogether fitter than themselves to serve our common Uncle. I
knew it too, but could never quite find in my heart to act upon the
knowledge. Much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore, and
considerably to the detriment of my official conscience, they
continued, during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves, and
loiter up and down the Custom-House steps. They spent a good deal of
time, also, asleep in their accustomed corners, with their chairs
tilted back against the wall; awaking, however, once or twice in a
forenoon, to bore one another with the several thousandth repetition
of old sea-stories, and mouldy jokes, that had grown to be passwords
and countersigns among them.

The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had no
great harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts, and the happy
consciousness of being usefully employed,—in their own behalf, at
least, if not for our beloved country,—these good old gentlemen went
through the various formalities of office. Sagaciously, under their
spectacles, did they peep into the holds of vessels! Mighty was their
fuss about little matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness
that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers! Whenever such
a mischance occurred,—when a wagon-load of valuable merchandise had
been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their
unsuspicious noses,—nothing could exceed the vigilance and alacrity
with which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock, and secure with
tape and sealing-wax, all the avenues of the delinquent vessel.
Instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence, the case seemed
rather to require an eulogium on their praiseworthy caution, after the
mischief had happened; a grateful recognition of the promptitude of
their zeal, the moment that there was no longer any remedy.

Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my foolish
habit to contract a kindness for them. The better part of my
companion’s character, if it have a better part, is that which usually
comes uppermost in my regard, and forms the type whereby I recognize
the man. As most of these old Custom-House officers had good traits,
and as my position in reference to them, being paternal and
protective, was favorable to the growth of friendly sentiments, I soon
grew to like them all. It was pleasant, in the summer forenoons,—when
the fervent heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family,
merely communicated a genial warmth to their half-torpid systems,—it
was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of them
all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms of
past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from
their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common
with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense
of humor, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam
that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect
alike to the green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. In one case,
however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the
phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.

It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent
all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In the first place,
my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were men among them in
their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether
superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their
evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were
sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good
repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there
will be no wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set of
wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from
their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away all
the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many
opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have stored their
memories with the husks. They spoke with far more interest and unction
of their morning’s breakfast, or yesterday’s, to-day’s, or to-morrow’s
dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the
world’s wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.

The father of the Custom-House—the patriarch, not only of this little
squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable body of
tide-waiters all over the United States—was a certain permanent
Inspector. He might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue
system, dyed in the wool, or, rather, born in the purple; since his
sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and formerly collector of the port, had
created an office for him, and appointed him to fill it, at a period
of the early ages which few living men can now remember. This
Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or
thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of
winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime’s
search. With his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed in
a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale
and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind
of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and
infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which
perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the
tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man’s utterance; they came
strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a
clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal,—and there was very
little else to look at,—he was a most satisfactory object, from the
thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his
capacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the
delights which he had ever aimed at, or conceived of. The careless
security of his life in the Custom-House, on a regular income, and
with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt
contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The original and more
potent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal
nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling
admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities,
indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from
walking on all-fours. He possessed no power of thought, no depth of
feeling, no troublesome sensibilities; nothing, in short, but a few
commonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper that grew
inevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty very respectably,
and to general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the husband
of three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children,
most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity, had likewise
returned to dust. Here, one would suppose, might have been sorrow
enough to imbue the sunniest disposition, through and through, with a
sable tinge. Not so with our old Inspector! One brief sigh sufficed to
carry off the entire burden of these dismal reminiscences. The next
moment, he was as ready for sport as any unbreeched infant; far
readier than the Collector’s junior clerk, who, at nineteen years, was
much the elder and graver man of the two.

I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I think,
livelier curiosity, than any other form of humanity there presented to
my notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect, in one
point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable, such an
absolute nonentity, in every other. My conclusion was that he had no
soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I have already said, but
instincts: and yet, withal, so cunningly had the few materials of his
character been put together, that there was no painful perception of
deficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with what I found
in him. It might be difficult—and it was so—to conceive how he
should exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but
surely his existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his
last breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moral
responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger scope
of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their blessed immunity from the
dreariness and duskiness of age.

One point, in which he had vastly the advantage over his four-footed
brethren, was his ability to recollect the good dinners which it had
made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat. His
gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of
roast-meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster. As he
possessed no higher attribute, and neither sacrificed nor vitiated any
spiritual endowment by devoting all his energies and ingenuities to
subserve the delight and profit of his maw, it always pleased and
satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher’s
meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table.
His reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the
actual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig or turkey under one’s
very nostrils. There were flavors on his palate that had lingered
there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently
as fresh as that of the mutton-chop which he had just devoured for his
breakfast. I have heard him smack his lips over dinners, every guest
at which, except himself, had long been food for worms. It was
marvellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were continually
rising up before him; not in anger or retribution, but as if grateful
for his former appreciation and seeking to resuscitate an endless
series of enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual. A tender-loin of
beef, a hind-quarter of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular
chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps
adorned his board in the days of the elder Adams, would be remembered;
while all the subsequent experience of our race, and all the events
that brightened or darkened his individual career, had gone over him
with as little permanent effect as the passing breeze. The chief
tragic event of the old man’s life, so far as I could judge, was his
mishap with a certain goose which lived and died some twenty or forty
years ago; a goose of most promising figure, but which, at table,
proved so inveterately tough that the carving-knife would make no
impression on its carcass, and it could only be divided with an axe
and handsaw.